Sometimes I’m lazy. I worked all morning on weeding and putting down bark mulch, wrote my 2,000, wanted to get 4,000, added another 500 instead and so ended up with 2500 and watched The Duchess, I think it was called, and groomed the dogs instead. Today, no matter what, I will be at the halfway point on the book though.
It’s lightly raining and I was out pulling up the marigolds and more weeds and I want to cut back the pentas and Spanish heather, irises today too.
I won’t make any promises about writing more than the 2,000 though. Maybe I’ll do it.
I’m off to write and during breaks, I’ll do more gardening.
I spent a lot of yesterday weeding because we had storms coming in last night that sounded like they were going to blow the windows in and the temperature dropped significantly. So while it was beautiful out, I wanted to get the whole front yard flowerbeds weeded.
I delivered the bear too and did 2,000 words on Highland Wolf, and proofed 5 more chapters on Night of the Billionaire Wolf. Ten done, 19 chapters to go!
I’m off to work, cold out, feel like I’m getting a head cold, ugh. So staying in the house and just writing. I’m on level 5 on Tower of Time. I didn’t get anything done on vampire, but I think I’m going to concentrate on getting Highland Wolf word count and more of Billionaire proofing done today. Vampire is extra, when I have more time.
Yesterday was a non-writing day, since I had to take care of my granddaughter and we were doing a million things last night, including taking little one to gymnastics to try it out. She was scared, cried, not ready for being left alone with a group of older kids who knew what they were doing.
Did you ever want to do something through your kids? Or did your parents do that to you????
Okay, so I admit when my daughter was five and all the other little girls were in ballet, like I’d wanted to do when I was little but my parents couldn’t afford it, I enrolled my daughter. After a few years of it, she wanted to do tap dance and jazz instead. I didn’t force her on anything. But later, she wanted to do gymnastics. I think she was about twelve, but all the kids had been doing it since they were little. So she didn’t go for very long.
So last night, this was an open session where you could try a kid out on it with kids that were probably about six. There was one new girl who was about 3 and a half, very outgoing. My granddaughter isn’t even three and she’s shy around new people. Instead of taking her to a class of preschoolers where moms sit this out now, Grandmom will be taking her to a 1-2 1/2 year old class where Grandmom (according to my daughter), must wear comfortable clothes to help out. Grandmom does just about everything in jeans, except for swimming. Walks. Hikes. Jeans are my go-to exercise outfit and for everything else.
Wait, Grandmom has to do toe touches? Grandmom has never been able to do toe touches except up to the age of about I don’t know, six? Cartwheels? Forget that. Handstands? Ha! Balance beams, I had cat like balance. Really! Hey, and I could do the monkey bars when no other woman in our mixed group of men and women could cross them during Army ROTC before having our breakfast in the mornings.
Anyway, I am always up for a new adventure. Maybe it will be in a story some time. I’m sure she would have tried some of the stuff if she’d had one of us in there with her, so we shall see. Once we reassured her all the kids were having fun, she wanted to go in and play on the mats, but she was still too scared.
In the meantime, oh, I did manage to get 1800 words yesterday, despite all the running. I actually did some writing sprints of 1000 before she arrived at the house, yay! But now, it’s a day of writing.
Tomorrow, Grandmom is trying out for gymnastics.
Have a super fun, stretchy kind of day! Limber up!
Having s’mores on New Year’s Eve. I know, where are the marshmallows, right? I was a sticky mess and we were trying to keep little one out of everything. Next time, I’ll take pictures, then start my own s’mores. lol
In a good way! I’m really working to keep at my new doubled-up word count goals, yet still cleaning out storage closets and I want to try and get to the gutters today, if I can. I’m an early morning person, so I took a long walk this morning to get mail in the brisk cold, then began my day, before writing. If it wouldn’t make so much noise, besides that it needs to be a little lighter out, I’d be out there using the vacuum to try and clean out the gutters. When I was out in the country, no problem. But close quarters like this? I don’t want to wake anyone and have a bunch of angry neighbors. So I contain myself.
I’m on the third level of Tower of Time, a good ways through it, battling higher numbers and more monsters ever than before. So much fun. I think I’m in for another battle.
And I’m up to 10K on Highland Wolf, went through the queries again on Red Wolf, explained a few, and now really need to read through it and see if anything else needs changed. I might do that first thing this morning and do word count afterwards. At night, I’m more tired.
Yesterday, I had 3 ideas for Highland Wolf, which is why I was able to get somewhere on the word count with it fairly quickly. In fact, I was having so much fun with it, I was in the zone. I love it when that happens. I didn’t even get to the third idea, so I’ll work that in today. It means writing scenes out of sequence this time, but they’re good, fun scenes. I try to write straight through the story–from beginning to end, but sometimes I just need to write what the characters are showing me like in a movie scene!
Okay, I’m off to feed the dogs, take them out and begin working on the edits. I want to get those turned in today, if I can.
Tomorrow is baby day. She’s back after the long holiday break. I still try to get a 1,000 done after she goes home and maybe I’ll be able to do 2,000. I have 10,000 on Highland Wolf now, and 51,000 words on Vampire Redemption. Woohoo!
I was sorting through a couple of more closets, trying to organize them more. I took some stuff to Goodwill, stuff I wasn’t wearing, wouldn’t ever wear, stuff I had excessive of-. I used to have 3 bedrooms with 3 beds and now I’m down to two, but still had too many comforters, so figured someone else might enjoy having them. When Hurricane Harvey hit, I donated tons of clothes and linens and blankets and dog beds for the displaced, but I still have too much.
When I went to Goodwill yesterday, they were inundated with stuff piled into mountains and I asked why. Everyone was getting rid of stuff for a tax deduction before the end of the year. They had 200 people and only 2 of them to handle it. lol They average about 10 people bringing in donations a day.
Anyway, it makes me feel good when I get rid of things taking up space when I don’t have as much space as I did before and hope someone else gets some use out of them.
I wrote 3,000 words on Highland Wolf. Had a really fun scene and didn’t want to stop writing. Had another idea for a scene when I woke in the middle of the night. I was having trouble getting into the book, so was writing 2,000 words a day on it and 2,000 on vampire. But once I began to think of fun conflictive scenes, yay!!! On vampire, I wrote 1,000 because I also was starting edits on Red Wolf. So all my goals were met, plus an extra 1,000 on Highland wolf!
Well, except I got a vacuum extension and I wanted to try and vacuum the pine needles out of my gutters. I don’t have a ladder tall enough to reach them now. I gave it to my daughter and son-in-law. I wanted something where I didn’t have to worry about climbing ladders to do the work. So we shall see how it works today.
I’ve been working on word count, still going back and forth between writing on two books and getting 2,000 words on each, getting things done, and playing my game. And playing with pictures occasionally. Creating these take a lot of time, whether they turn out or not. Same with writing books. lol
The frogs and yeti are from Daz3D, the lily pads and some of the koi are from a picture I’d taken, the other koi are from pixelsquid, and grasses, rocks and water, background, individual pieces from Oscraps.
Okay, I’m off to write, play my game, make phone calls, write, play my game, write. Goal is 2,000 words per book. We’re under dense fog advisory this morning, rain later. I love both, as long as I don’t have to go anywhere.
Have a fun day and remember to enjoy the little things too!
In one of my cougar shifter stories, I have the heroine home alone on New Year’s Eve, but she can’t quit thinking about the bad guy she’s trying to take down–she’s a special agent with an agency–and so she gets herself into a mess, meets a deputy sheriff, also a cougar, who wonders what she’s thinking when she’s involved in a shootout in a ghost town, and that’s her wild and exciting New Year’s Eve. Her new year’s resolution is to have a great New Year’s, without the shootouts and all, for next New Year’s Eve.
Hope you all are having a lovely day today. I finally figured out how to assign skills to my characters in the game and guess what? I’m killing the monsters so much more easily! Which is a good thing because the next level is supposed to be really tough, so the Tower Avator warned me, and I was already having trouble. My kids laugh at me. My daughter told me I go into battles without the skills and armor and then wonder why I’m dying.
But hey, I watched a video a player had posted and his team was annihilated twice because he had his tank, the heavily armored guy, hiding in the background. He needs to be up close and personal with the bad guys to whittle down their health. An air elemental was chasing them around while they were trying to hide around rocks the second time. Didn’t work. So I didn’t feel so bad about two of my earlier battles. I know, misery loves company.
But I’m back in the game. Writing first though. I did 2500 words on the vampire story yesterday, but now I need to get onto writing the deadline book.
Have a wonderful day! I’m ready to eliminate some monsters and make the world right again.
Two little chickadees visited my feeders yesterday nearing twilight. The sun was hitting my window and showing off the dust, lol, so I wasn’t sure how well the pictures would turn out. Note to self: Wash windows again. But the pictures didn’t turn out too bad. I love chickadees. They are so fast and flittery, they’re hard for me to capture. And yes, we still have roses in bloom.
Spinning circles–that’s what I was having when: I tried to edit my manuscript…spinning circle on my Word. Spinning circles on my blog. Spinning circles on everything.
Do you ever feel your life is on hold because of the evil, uncontrollable spinning circles?
For us, it’s New Year’s Eve and I’m having fun at my daughter and SIL’s this evening–dinner, games, movies, s’mores, yep, it’ll be fun. I picked up everything yesterday at the grocery store for the party. Hope I didn’t forget anything.
Yesterday, I managed another 4,000 words on the Vampire Redemption, which meant I caught up on the book, over halfway done, yay! I’m shooting for my 2,000 word goal, hoping I’ll get 4,000 before all the partying we’ll be doing today!
Do you have plans for New Year’s Eve if you haven’t already had yours on the other side of the world?
I do this, for real, but also I was playing around with something called 4thewords, a writing subscription game where you have to write to defeat the monster. You’re on a timer. 250 words to beat a low level monster in half an hour. Ten minutes after I begin writing, I’ve beaten the monster. It’s free for the first month. Some author friends are using it so I thought I’d give it a try, at least while it’s free.
I’ve been only writing 1,000 words a day instead of my goal of 2,000 and that put me behind. Not my fault exactly as I’ve been cleaning out closets, putting away Christmas stuff, weeding, and cleaning.
Now, I had 1,000 words I’d already written on my new book, not yet scheduled in my goals, and I needed 5,000 on my vampire book, getting behinder by the day. (Yes, behinder is my word. I own it. It’s mine. You may use it, just know it’s a Terry made-up word.)
I had 153 words of my 5,000 I needed, so I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere with my word count, only maybe 1,000 on the vampire book. I played the monster game. The way I do it is I just do a low level 250 word monster, then once I have my defeated monster in 10 minutes, I pop up and go get some more house cleaning done, or feed the puppies, or take them out, or fix lunch. But then I’m back to a dedicated monster kill. And 250 words later, I’m back to some more jobs. By doing this, I actually was writing sections of my book in 250 increments and managed to get 1800 words just on the monster game and ended up with 3,000 words on the story for a total of 4,000 words yesterday, including the other book.
Does the game work? For me, it can. I could take an hour or longer to write 250 words because I was distracted by emails and such. Playing with photos or artwork. Or popping up to do some more things. Distraction after distraction. So it works! You can set up higher level monsters to fight and write longer at a sitting, but for yesterday, I liked setting it at lower word count so when I began to write, I had some idea of the scene and could just write straight through. I tend to reread sections and edit throughout, so that stops that and I just write.
Last night, I printed out what I had written and edited it. Worked great, and the scenes were great. I have to ship books today and then I’m going to try it again. I have 4,000 words I need to catch up. 2,000 for my word goal today, and 2,000 I’m still behind. And I hope I can write another 1,000 on the new story, to keep up with it a little. By January 1st, I need to just write on it. On the vampire one, I’m trying to get to the halfway point. If I finish my deadline books early, I’ll finish writing the vampire one and publish it!
Okay, off to ship books and then it’s time to write to fight monsters.
It’s really important if you have a million goals like I do to keep making progress at whatever you’re doing. Since it’s cooled down a little, I’ve been weeding and weeding and weeding and it’s getting there. I can’t do it all at once, but I keep working at it. I have another four 40-gallon bags out for the trash again with spent zinnias and tons of grass hiding among them that I couldn’t reach for the zinnia. I had that many out for Monday’s trash too.
So it’s getting better! Just keep working at it. I also planted mondo grass last night, trying to find a way to have something evergreen that fills in where the weeds are growing. Hope it works. That’s also the important thing. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. It could be that this plant doesn’t, but something else will.
I redid a cover for one of my novellas. I’ve had several for it but I haven’t liked anything else I’ve done or purchased in the past, so hopefully this one will be the one. It’s for a vampire romantic suspense.
And I was designing the cover for the Cougar Halloween Mischief novella. I was working on the story also. Got my first 1,000 words. Since my novellas are shorter, about 25-30K, I’m excited to get a start! For those of you who are following the cougar shifters of Yuma Town, Colorado, this is about Ricky Jones and the horrible, awful, wonderful, beautiful Friday the 13th where his world is again turned upside down before Halloween. Now if I could stay out of the garden long enough to concentrate on it… But man, the garden needs lots more tender, loving care. It’s getting there though!
This morning, I went to test out my shoulder, hand behind back, upward movement, and YAY!!! It’s sooooooooo much better. Last night, I tried it and it was bad. So I thought I was backsliding. After lifting a 28 lb toddler all day, my shoulder was killing me. This morning, when normally I try to pull my arm up behind my back, I could do it higher, but only for a second and the pain is excruciating. Today, I was able to move it to that spot for 10 times for 10 second holds. It hurt, but it was doable. Yay!!! And with a yoga strap, I think I even was able to get it higher for about 5 repetitions with 10 second holds. So I’m making progress!
I have someone coming to clean my gutters. I took my 6 foot ladder out to clean them myself and realized I needed a 10 foot ladder to do the job. ugh. Last tropical storm, I had a torrent of water built up in the gutters gushing over the top, so hopefully, this will take care of that! And I got a new guy to mow the lawn. My neighbor’s son got a job and we had another neighbor kid doing the yard. He broke a fence panel in my gate that I still need to have fixed. So this guy looks like he’ll be my go to yardman now.
Before I turn this into a book, I’m out of here.
Have a wonderful, beautiful day, that skips the horrible, awful part that Ricky is having!
